Narratives

Chung-Hee Kim, C-H to his friends, likes to think of himself as a ânormalâ American teenager. He lives in a modest town in a suburb of a large midwestern city. Heâs a freshman at the local high school.

His parents are nice, quiet, but a bit square. They donât âgetâ him, and they really donât get the whole online thing, but theyâre OK. More important, they donât get in the way, especially when it comes to using the computer in his bedroom.

When heâs not in school or hanging out with his friends, C-H spends most of his free time online. Heâs got a MySpace page that he keeps up to date with the latest features: his favorite music plays when a visitor hits the page, theyâre met with pictures of his favorite movie actresses, and his friends have posted a long list of comments every time he makes a move. Heâs got a Facebook account, but fewer of his friends are on there, so he goes back only once or twice a week to look something up or check out the Wall on his page. He tries out every new service thatâs hot before most of his friends do.

Mostly, Chung-Hee is into Second Life. Heâs got an avatar he calls âVirtualC-Hâ â a young, dashing, twenty-first-century knight, who zips around in a partial suit of body armor. When he was visiting his cousins in South Korea last summer, he played around on CyWorld, and heâs had an account on There.com. Most of his friends are into World of Warcraft. But Second Life is where itâs at for C-H.

For hours every afternoon, he dives into a parallel life. His friends from school are not into Second Life as much, so he mostly chats with people he comes across in public spaces he doesnât otherwise know. Since C-H thinks heâd like to become an architect, he hangs around with other Second Life users who build things. In Second Life, heâs constructed a post-modern home for his avatar thatâs earned him a reputation as a budding talent. Heâs participated in group efforts to design and build edgy-looking bridges, roads, and towers.

Today, C-H is online, as usual, in the late afternoon. The sunâs gone down, but C-H hasnât bothered yet to turn on the lights in his bedroom. His PC throws off a blue-ish light.

Heâs got a few IM windows open, chatting here and there with a few friends from the high school â mostly idle banter about whoâs hot, whoâs going to the freshman dance with whom, the usual. Mainly, though, heâs focused on his open web browser, where heâs in an IRC chat. He found this chat by following a few people he met through his interest in architecture. The chat is invite-only, but it turned out not to be hard to work an invite for C-H because of his design skills demonstrated in Second Life.

Most of the participants in the chat seemed to be different than the Second Life crowd. After a few witty exchanges, a participant named designboy said, âhey C-H, are you on IM? Find me at dboy1239 on [take your pick].â

Without much thought, C-H took his pick of instant messaging services â two were already opened â and sent an instant invite to dboy1239 to become his buddy. A moment later, C-H and dboy1239 had a one-on-one chat going while both continued to participate in the group IRC conversation. They got on well. C-H smiled as he signed off to head to dinner: âc u l8r, designboy.â âU2!â came the reply, and C-H shut the lid on his laptop.

Designboy and C-H became fast friends online. Designboy told C-H he lived in New York City, but that he had relatives who lived in Chicago, not far from C-Hâs town. He hoped to visit them that summer, after school let out. He hoped he might get to meet C-H then. C-H said thatâd be great.

In June, C-H got an e-mail from Designboy with his travel itinerary attached â showing an economy-class ticket from LaGuardia to OâHare. âDid you get my flight info? Iâd like to meet you in person. Letâs meet up when Iâm in Chicago,â Designboy IMed later that day. âWhenâs good for you?â C-H pinged back a quick âsure, sounds good.â

But he wasnât so sure it sounded good. He wanted to meet Designboy â theyâd had a great conversation for six months running online, and his friend clearly knew his stuff when it came to architecture â but C-H was shy and he didnât know if theyâd get along in person as well as they had online. Heâd have to think it through.

Problems

Cyber Bullying

[from Erin Mishkin's unpublished paper on cyber bullying (2005)] Keeping in mind the prevalence of the Internet and cell phones in teensâ lives and their dependence on digital media to maintain social ties, cyber bullying is a particularly effective means of psychological harassment. An official definition of bullying given by the National Mental Health Information Center states that bullying behavior must have the following three characteristics: 1) it must have a negative intent; 2) it must occur repeatedly over time; and 3) there must exist an imbalance of power, âwith a more powerful person or group attacking a less powerful oneâ (National Mental Health Information Center, 2005). This âimbalance of powerâ is a key element of bullying, which distinguishes this behavior from other types of aggression.

As a form of bullying, cyber bullying retains all three of these characteristics of traditional bullying, but with some significant twists. First, the Internet and other digital media allow for the bully to remain anonymous to his or her victim, which, among other things, establishes an imbalance of power, with substantial power given to the perpetrator. In addition, though studies have shown that users have lauded this trait of the Internet, citing the ability to remain anonymous as enabling them to truly express themselves (Stern, 2002), Ybarra and Mitchell (2004) noted potentially dangerous implications associated with anonymity, one being ââ¦heightened aggression and inappropriate behaviour.â They continued, âThus the Internet may be conducive to Internet aggression for some who feel constrained by social expectations in traditional communication, but freed from these constraints in online conversations where the user cannot be seen nor the impact of his or her words on the other person be experiencedâ (p. 320). Because of this inability to see the implications of his or her behavior, the bully is unlikely to experience feelings of remorse or compassion toward his or her victim (Schneier as cited by Strom & Strom, 2005). In addition, some suggest that this distancing between the bully and his or her victim leads to an âunprecedented degree of brutality, especially when combined with a typical adolescentâs lack of impulse control and underdeveloped empathy skillsâ (Harmon, 2004). Parry Aftab, founder of WiredSafety.org explained that teens are âexploring who they areâand they role-play by being mean, horrible and hateful in ways they would never be off-lineâ (Chu, 2005, p. 52). He went on to recount a time when he met a clean-cut preppy 13-year old who revealed that he would regularly gather information in chat rooms and websites and use that as a means to harass the strangers as if he were an acquaintance or friend. Aftab said, âHe said to me, âI would never do anything in real life. Iâm a good kid. But I can do it online because it doesnât matterââ (Chu, 2005, p. 52).

Another way that cyber bullying is different from traditional bullying is the manner and speed with which digital media can distribute messages. No longer must bullies rely on the slow turn of the rumor mill to berate and torment their victims. With a click of a mouse, harmful messages can be sent to a large number of people instantaneously (via list servs, group text messages, group chats, websites, etc.). And, as emphasized earlier, the anonymity that digital media provide makes behavior that publicly humiliates on such a large scale easier to engage in.

Finally, this form of bullying does not allow the victim to easily escape from the harassment becauseâas long as one has a cell phone or access to a computerâthere are no distinct boundaries to the maltreatment. (But it should be noted that even if one âdisconnectsâ entirely, which is not recommended, it is difficult to escape from harassment since cyber bullying and the real world almost always overlap.) Though bullying via cell phone has been a popular form of harassment among teens in England and Japan for years, it is just starting to take hold in the United States (and camera phones enable bullies to take compromising pictures or videos of their victims unbeknownst to them and then send them to a large distribution list) (Paulson, 2003). Take the experience of eighth-grader Amanda Marcuson for example. One day Amanda had had a minor disagreement at school about a stolen pencil case and when she got home, she was barraged with instant messages touting her as a tattletale, a liar, and a âstuck-up bitchâ (Harmon, 2004). As a means of escape, Amanda went to a basketball game with her family, but because she had her email automatically forwarded to her cell phone, the harassment extended to the stands of the auditoriumâwith Amanda receiving 50 hateful emails in just the short amount of time she was at the game. Consistent with cyber bullying traits, Amanda told reporters at the New York Times that while the harassment continued online, the girls inflicting the bullying never again spoke to her in person (Harmon, 2004).

Cyber bullying: From a Developmental Perspective
One of the reasons why cyber bullying is such a dangerous problem for youth is that adolescents are still in the process of developing these social competencies and might not be capable of fully grasping the seriousness of their actionsâespecially in an online setting where one cannot see othersâ body language or facial reactions. According to Bengtsson & Johnson (1992), âYoung children tend to focus on readily observable, external characteristics of people. With increasing age, this focus is shifted to internal dimensions of the personâ (p. 2). As noted earlier, the anonymity factor of many online interactions taps into this developmental challengeâif a teen cannot see the response of the person they are communicating with, chances are they will be less empathetic to their experiences and less likely to curb their actions. As Willard (2004) emphasizes, empathy is explicitly tied to the ability to see anotherâs perspective. She notes, âThe emerging ability to take the perspectives of another person increases the probability that a growing child or young teen will have an empathic responseâfeeling hurt insideâupon learning that an unseen other person has been harmed or is feeling hurtâ (p. 3).

It is during adolescence that the development of oneâs personal identity takes place (Erickson, 1963 as cited by Willard, 2004), where we begin developing our âinternalized moral codesâ Willard (2004, p. 2). According to Willard, we feel guilty when we act in a way that goes against our internal moral codeâunless we can rationalize the action. This rationalization becomes easier in an online setting, where our actions might not seem real or we cannot see the reactions of the person who we have just harmed. Willard (2004, p. 5) gives the following examples of rationalizations that exist in both the real world and an online setting (but tend to be more prevalent in an online atmosphere): 1) âI wonât get caughtâ; 2) âIt didnât really hurtâ; 3) âIt is not a real personâ; and 4) âEveryone does it.â

Online Victimization

When you think of an Internet connection as a portal into the private domain, it can bring to mind alarming images â that of the classic male predator, situated in a dark room and lit only by his computer screen as he preys upon innocent children. But what weâre learning (especially as a result of the studies conducted by the Center for Crimes Against Children, whose 2006 report (pdf) is the basis for this entry) is that itâs more complicated an issue.

Online victimization can be defined in any number of ways. The Center for Crimes Against Children defines online victimization as any of the following: 1. Exposure to unwanted sexual material 2. Sexual solicitations 3. Harassment

Exposure to unwanted sexual material
What are the means by which youth are inadvertently accessing unwanted sexual material? Everything from being sent links to pornographic sites through IM or email to coming across sexual material when doing innocuous searches online. One in three youth have experienced exposure to unwanted sexual material. Since 2000, there has been an increase in the number of youth exposed to unwanted sexual material; reasons for this, according to the CCAC; could include increased number of youth with Internet access, increased time spent online; technological advances (image capturing media more ubiquitous, computers more capable of storing and downloading large files more efficiently); and âaggressive marketingâ of sexual material through pop-up ads and adware.

Sexual solicitations
According to the Center for Crimes Against Children, sexual solicitations can take two forms: non-aggressive and aggressive (where the aggressive entails some kind of offline encounter â either by phone, mail, or in-person contact).

Harassment
Harassment entails threats or other offensive behavior that could not be categorized as sexual solicitation.

Out of this report, there were some very positive findings about online victimization. From the time they did their first survey in 2000 to 2005, there had been a decline in the number of youth who communicate online with people they donât know in person. There was also a decline in the number of youth who form close online relationships with people they met online and in the number of those receiving unwanted sexual solicitations. What this means, perhaps, is that youth are becoming more aware about the potential risks involved in talking to strangers online. This was further validated by a recent report issued by the Pew Internet and American Life Project; through a series of questions about social networking sites, Pew discovered that young people are very aware about what information they post to their profiles and that females, especially, typically avoid including any information that could lead someone they donât know to track them down in an offline setting. But what the CCAC emphasizes is that it is not those youth who share private information with strangers who are most at risk of online victimization, but those youth who willingly engage in conversations about sexuality online or who engage in risky online behavior such as visiting porn sites or frequenting chat rooms.

Despite the good news that youth have developed an awareness about what information they're sharing online, the CCAC also found that the number of aggressive sexual solicitations has remained about the same since 2000. In addition, they noted an emerging trend of youth being asked to send sexual images of themselves to online solicitors (again, thanks to the advent of inexpensive tools like web cams and digital cameras).

Debunking Myths: Some important pieces of information to highlight that also came out of CCACâs reports:

Victims are typically teens, not young children.
Offenders typically do not lie about their age or their intent.
Offenders develop a relationship with their victim; often times youth will meet up with the offender on multiple occasions and engage in sexual acts.
Youth are more likely to engage in risky online behavior when surrounded by a group of their peers.

At a recent panel discussion on online victimization presented to Congress, David Finkelhor explained a bit about these findings, âSo these are not mostly violence sex crimes, but they are criminal seductions that take advantage of teenage, common teenage vulnerabilities. The offenders lure teens after weeks of conversations with them, they play on teensâ desires for romance, adventure, sexual information, understanding, and they lure them to encounters that the teams know are sexual in nature with people who are considerably older than themselves.â He continues, ââ¦itâs not giving out personal information that puts kid at risk. Itâs not having a blog or a personal website that does that either. What puts kids in danger is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers or having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web like going to sex sites and chat rooms, meeting lots of people there, kind of behaving in what we call like an internet daredevil.â

Solutions

Education and Awareness: Making a "Real World" Connection

Because being connected is such an integral part of teensâ lives, some youth may hesitate telling their parents about the harassment they encounter for fear that their online privileges will be taken away. The best way to combat cyber bullying or other forms of harassment is not to reign in or limit a teenâs use of technology, but to make sure adults keep the lines of communication open. In addition to keeping the computer in a public space, parents should also become more aware of what their children are doing online. They should consider the Internet as an opportunity to engage in conversation with their children about their interests, talents, and network of friends.

It is important to emphasize with youth that there is a distinct connection between what happens online and in the "real world." Adults should communicate to youth that their actions have implications in a real world setting. Regarding cyber bullying in particular, adults must also relay traditional techniques of combating bullying, among them being to report incidents, keep records, and not to engage the bully. âItâs not new bullying, itâs just a vehicle,â says Nancy Mullin-Rindler, director of the Project on Teasing and Bullying at Wellesley College (Paulson, 2003). In addition, because research has shown that the majority of cyber bullies have been victims of traditional bullying, this approachâ-combating the behavior versus limiting the technologyâ-would ultimately help in preventing both cyber and conventional bullying.

Cyber bullying poses a stickier problem for schools that are finding themselves in the middle of First Amendment debates. Despite the fact that whatever happens online (no matter where the location) typically spreads to the school environment, inevitably impacting studentsâ learning, does a school principal have the right to punish someone for what they say outside of school parameters? Because of this legal quagmire, schoolsâ best bet might be educating parents and teens alike on both the potentially harmful uses of and also the many opportunities presented by digital media. In addition, schools should also provide peer groups - perhaps even online - where students can seek advice and compare experiences.

Curriculum

Access the Keeping It Real Curriculum on cyber bullying.

Additional tips for parents

Taken verbatim from an interview with Henry Jenkins and danah boyd:

1. Communication with your daughter or son is key. Build a trusting relationship through dialogue. It is important to talk with them about your concerns; it is even more important to listen to what they have to say about their online experiences and why these sites are such an important part of their interactions with their peers. You need to recognize that some unfamiliar experiences look scarier from the outside than they are. Take time to understand what you are seeing and what it means to participants.

2. Create an account to understand how the site works, but not to stalk your kids. They need room to explore, but if you are familiar with the media and technology that they consume, you can provide valuable guidance and suggestions. Surveillance, while possible, damages a trusting parent/child relationship.

3. Ask your kids how they choose to represent themselves and why. Use MySpace as a resource to start a conversation about contemporary fashion, ideals, and media images.

4. Talk about private/ public issues with your kids. Help them to understand the consequences of making certain information publicly accessible. Get them to think through all of the possible audiences who might come into contact with their online information. Teens often imagine MySpace as a youth-only world. It isn't and they need to consider what the consequences would be if their grandparents, their teachers, admissions officers or a future employer read what they said about themselves. Helping your children learn how to negotiate such public environments is a great educational opportunity.

5. Talk through what kids should do if they receive unwanted attention online or if they find themselves the victims of cyberbullying. A growing number of sites provide useful information about how to confront such problems, including Net Family News , NetSmartz and SafeTeens. The âSafety Tipsâ section of MySpace also provides information for both parents and teens, including MySpace policies.